Poetry, memoir,blogs and photographs from my world on the west coast of Canada.

Friday, June 1, 2012

No Words

image from facebook, by indosurflife.com

Dani's prompt over at Poetry Jam this week is: painting a picture with words.

Humankind's imprint on

the ocean's gyres:

no words for so much shame

5 million tons of tsunami debris washed out of Japan in March 2011 flowing along the gyres (large spinning currents) to the shores of the Pacific.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, already in existence before the tsunami, is now roughly the size of Texas.

Plastic debris is frequently found in the stomachs of albatross and sea turtles. A scientist recently watched an albatross unsuccessfully try to cough up a plastic toothbrush. Whales and porpoises are often entangled in ropes and wire and driftnets.

100 million tons of plastic debris has accumulated in the ocean over the last fifty years. The mass increases by a factor of ten every two to three years.

15 comments:

Horrendous, Sherry, but I can't help thinking a tsunami is a natural disaster, over which we have no control. In the meantime, however, our prime minister is planning to allow a pipeline across Alberta and British Columbia, which is capable of producing multiple unnatural disasters on the Pacific Coast.If we can't trust the people elected to represent our country, is that a natural or manmade disaster?K

Heart breaking.You know before all this happened, they showed pictures of the Arctic, and it too is such a waste ground now for all types of collected garbage. Heaps of it in the water there too.We are killing our oceans, our planet and ourselves.Yes, depressing.

Thank you for bringing awaress to this issue. That's why it's so important to recycle. In my home, we recycle everything possible, paper, plastic and try to use biodegradable products. Every little bit helps to save the earth. Very thoughtful haiku.

So sad. I recently came across this quote from a 19th-century woman from the Wintu Tribe of Northern California. You'll appreciate it.

""When we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up. When we dig roots, we make little holes. When we build houses, we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things. We shake down acorns and pine nuts. We don't chop down the trees. We only use dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull down the trees, kill everything. The White people pay no attention. How can the spirit of the earth like the White man? Everywhere the White man has touched it, it is sore."

When I go to the beach and see the rubbish on the coast, it makes me sad and angry -- how people just don't care, just throwing trash about. It's doing it to your own house in a way. It's ridiculous how people don't seem to see, this is all their space yet they act like they don't belong. A real shame.

Yeah, this is the Eurocentric way of life that has destroyed the Americas as well. Between fracking for natural gas, pipelines, and leaking oil rigs, we are so screwed I almost can't believe that this is the legacy I'm leaving Riley: A world in which I have worked as an environmental advocate, always squelched by Big Money (which is now a Big Person according to the US Supreme Court).

And we CANNOT trust elected officials because they no longer serve us. They serve corporate masters who continue to trash Mother Earth in the name of Daddy Big Bucks and Cousin Wall Street. Amy